Jackie Chan was in Beijing on September 3 for the closing ceremony of the first Dragon’s Heart Summer Camp.
The camp was part of Jackie’s Dragon’s Heart Charity, which aids children in poverty-stricken areas in China. Jackie watched as children at the camp sang and danced for him, then talked to them about leading a charitable life.
From Jackie’s website: “When Jackie Chan isn’t making movies, he is very busy working to help other people, especially children. Jackie has been involved in charity work for 20 years, establishing his Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation in 1988. In October of 2004, Jackie founded the Dragon’s Heart Foundation to help children and the elderly in poor and remote areas of China. The Dragon’s Heart Foundation builds schools in these remote areas and also gives aid to the elderly and handicapped. In the past four years, Jackie has taken many trips to remote areas of China to bring supplies and most of all to bring love and support to poor children and the elderly.
“There are many children who don’t have enough money to go to school and Jackie wants to help them get an education. He uses money collected through the Dragon’s Heart Foundation to help the children. But do you wonder where Dragon’s Heart gets donations from? They get money from people like you; people who just want to help kids who want to go to school. Jackie collects the money and then builds the schools! So far the Foundation has built twenty-one schools and elderly residences in Guizhou, Xichang, Shandong, Erdos, Changchun, and Yanbian! After the May 12, 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, Jackie promised to use money from the Dragon’s Heart Foundation to help rebuild schools in the devastated areas.
“In August, 2006 when Jackie came back from a Dragon’s Heart charity mission to Guizhou, China, he thought of a fun way for you to help poor children go to school. The project is called Build a School For a Dollar. You may wonder how anyone – even Jackie – could build a whole school for a dollar. Of course no one can. But if you put your dollar together with someone else’s dollar and a whole bunch of other dollars, you could have enough money to build a school! And that’s our plan. As an added bonus, Jackie has promised to match your donation. That means if you donate a dollar, Jackie will donate a dollar. If you donate ten dollars, Jackie will donate ten dollars!”
So far, fans have donated over US$90,000 to the initiative, and Jackie has matched this with $180,000 – enough to build two schools.
Source: JackieChan.com
